[Mechwarrior 5] Joining the party late...

[Kasey Chang]

You guys have mentioned airstrikes...what is this sorcery you speak of?

When you negotiate a contract, sometimes you can spend 1 or more points on air strikes. In battle, you then designate a target to hit and seconds later that area gets hit with some precision air strikes. Basically a miniature artillery barrage centered on your designated impact point. It's great for wrecking bases or softening up your enemies. I sometimes drop one on an incoming dropship to soften up the armor of the mechs it just dropped. There's a cycle time between air strikes if you have more than one (I think it's 10-15 seconds). And you are limited to line of sight with your designator. So it's best to look for a hill that overlooks your target at a distance of about 1.25km, but it can be dropped "danger close".

[Kasey Chang]

I am cruising the spaceways trying to hit 500M in assets... I am only missing 2 mech models (I usually have several variants of each model) and almost all of my pilots are topped out, even with the bonus skills from pilot overhaul (one guy is 80/80, normal game limit is 60/60) so I am basically taking dif 80-100 missions. Did have things go badly... in two missions I actually lost a mech... the mech can be salvaged. It's the weapons that can't be easily replaced, as EVERYTHING now has T4 or T5 weapons, but some are still scarce. My King Crab CAR got surrounded and got cored. Lost one of the only 2 LBX/10 T4's I have. Probably should more some of the armor to the back, eh? And once the Atlas BH got cored. Should have watched the friendlies' armor more closely. Was trying to go for a record on how much extra bounty I can make off battlefield / warzone. The answer so far is 1.26 million... but it cost me a lot more than that in damages.

[Kasey Chang]

Turns out there's an end to Warzone/Battlefield missions... If you have the skills and/or mech to make it that far. Someone did it with two Annihilators with pure energy setup (requires YAML or similar mods), earned almost 7 million bonus bounty... and killed 130+ mechs by themselves.

----

RIP, Ortiz. You were one of my best pilots (82/82!) and somehow, this was the mission where you bought the farm. It was supposed to be a simple demolition mission, only difficulty 82, and we brought some of our best mechs... a Mauler Hero, an Archer Hero, an Atlas Hero, and the Corsair hero. The mission was strange in that while the enemies were not that strong, they are so... numerous! We stopped 1.2k away and dropped two airstrikes on the base, then before we even pushed the throttle to 100%, a dropship landed between us and the base, and dropped off 3 mechs! They were light and medium mechs, and we killed them easily, but it was a bad sign. Another dropship dropped reinforcements as we demolished the rest of the base, but enemies were converging from all directions, and soon there were like 8 light and medium mechs plus armor plus VTOLs... Gauss bolts, PPC bolts, lasers, missile trails... when there was one mech left, I looked around, and there you are, already lost a limb and half of your armor. I ordered everyone to form on me and ran for the LZ, but it was 1.8 km away, even as yet ANOTHER dropship landed less than a click away. Ordered all of you to run for it, as I charged this latest group. Agincourt's missiles roared, and I scored three headshots in quick succession. But when I turned around only two friendly mechs were left standing. We hoped that you had survived, as Ryana landed, but it appears the last hit took you in the cockpit along with most of the mech's left torso.

We always joked about what you REALLY meant when you said you'd be waiting for me in the briefing room. But nonetheless, you will be missed.

[NickAragua]

See you on the other side Ortiz. Hope you enjoy the double heat sinks.

[Kasey Chang]

I have about 125M C-bills and I'm mainly just collecting mechs at this time, while searching for some truly rare mechs and hero mechs I haven't found.

[Blackhawk]

I've realized that the game is giving me hints to move along. I've been doing assorted missions, doing cantina missions, collecting mechs... and now I realize that I'm getting almost zero reputation from them. I focused on some campaign/story missions for a bit. Now the next one is difficulty 60, so that'll be a while. I likely just need to move into more dangerous territories and push myself a little. And I still don't have a mech (for myself) that I 'love', and the best ones I've gotten for my lance are all heavily reliant on arm-mounted weapons (which the AI does a poor job with.) So, yeah - that's the hint that I need to get my ass into new territories.

Question: I have campaign missions for the DLC on my list. Should I tackle these as I go (mixed in with the regular stuff), beeline to them and finish them first, or save them until near the end?

[Hyena]

I found a 50-tonner that I absolutely love. It's almost a bit of a cheat mode, to be honest. It's the Hunchback-4P.

I pretend that stands for 'PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW", because it has eight (8!) medium lasers and enough heat sinks to blaze away with no problem. I have them set up to 4 per mouse button, and they cycle fast enough to nearly always have one quad up whenever I need/want. I can take an 80-ton mech down with three or four double shots to each leg. Even took an Atlas down like that while it's attention was focused on my teammates.

Even if it loses both arms, there's still 6 lasers left, because they are all on the right torso. So much fun sawing medium and light mechs in half with two shots to center mass, too...

[NickAragua]

My favorite mechs were the Thunderbolt 5SE, Grasshopper and Highlander (really, any variant, but obviously the 732 with gauss rifle is better). They all have the characteristic of one main gun and a bunch of smaller guns. The main gun is either a large laser (great for shooting down helicopters and other annoying bullshit from long range) or a PPC/gauss rifle (for mechs). Also, heavies with jump jets are just super. Normally, if I'm in an assault or a heavy, it takes half an hour to turn around, which makes it hard to catch those stupid little bug mechs zipping around and also makes it hard to get out of a sticky situation.

Jump jets are basically a "get out of jail free" card - I get surrounded by mechs, I fire up the jump jets and now they're all on one side of me instead. In the previous mechwarrior games I'd always strip off the jump jets, but here I leave them (well, maybe sometimes I drop down to two or so for more armor or something).

Eventually, when you get to ~3040-3050, double heat sinks just start showing up in stores, but, before then, I can't be the only one who buys hero light mechs with just the intent of stripping DHS from them to mount on my bigger better mechs.

[Blackhawk]

The tough thing about looking for good mechs is that nobody talks about the ones that are actually available. They just talk about the top few in a the game that aren't going to do you much good for the first 80% of it. Yeah, I'm sure those 90-ton hero mechs are great, but what about the majority of the game before you can find those?

Speaking of which, I still haven't seen many hero mechs. I found one, then saw one (a Jenner) in a mech market. That's it.

[NickAragua]

Of the common stuff, the Thunderbolt is probably one of the easiest to find. It's pretty good - a big energy slot, three medium energy slots, a pair of missile slots. Armor is near max by default, and you can shuffle the missile racks around to your preference. I like to strip the MGs and SRM/2 to upgrade the LRM rack.

Grasshopper is pretty common too, big energy slot and 4x medium energy slots, plus a tiny missile slot that you can pull out for more of the other stuff.

For 55-tonners, I like the Wolverine 6M and the Griffin 1S, although the main problem with the 1S is that all its guns are in the right arm. You lose that, and you may as well head back to the dropship.

Hunchback is an excellent common mech, either with burst-fire AC/20 or one of the disco ball variants.

Not really a big fan of things less than 50 tons if I can help it. I know that it's very much possible to have some kind of meme build where you zip around the back of assault mechs and take them out while everyone misses you, but that's not really my thing.

I occasionally find hero mechs, but a lot of them don't really have the weapon loadouts I want.

[Kasey Chang]

You can make almost any mech viable with a little reconfiguration and a little adjustment in tactics. I'm in the "SRM spam" camp, and I can score headshots with my Archer Agincourt, and before that, with my Orion V configured with 3 xSRM4, plus a few lasers. But then, I've learned how to lob SRMs so I can even kill gunships with it if they get close enough.

I prefer 55t mechs myself. The free SLDF mech Wolverine 7H is useful even after you goofed up and lost the UAC/5 and you had to replace it with a regular AC/5. But even its plainer cousins like the 6Rs are perfectly usable mechs. Kintaro-18 is a great little SRM boat when you can get it, as is the Dervish. And I've used most of them at one time or another.

Hero mechs are found more often in the high intensity areas, like near Terra where you get Rep 15 conflict zones.

[Hyena]

Not really a big fan of things less than 50 tons if I can help it. I know that it's very much possible to have some kind of meme build where you zip around the back of assault mechs and take them out while everyone misses you, but that's not really my thing.

I occasionally find hero mechs, but a lot of them don't really have the weapon loadouts I want.

I agree on the disdain for lighter mechs, but I have a Crab that I used for a raid mission tonight that gets the job done. One of those, "You better sprint from one objective to the next because we're gonna spam enemies at you until you die" missions. I tried once and had a total lance wipe, then reloaded and soloed it with my trusty Crab at 81 speed.

[Kasey Chang]

I am going over all of my hero mechs and contemplating on which ones I want to keep in my lance versus which ones I want to try and put back on ice. I think I have 80-90% of all hero mechs, and I have at least one model of every mech except Nightstar (which is in campaign, but AFAIK, not career, unless I got extremely lucky in Kurita space). The game mech-a-pedia says I have seen or collected 85% of all known mechs in the game. My networth is about 820M C-bills, with over 200M of that in cash.

I decided to put Awesome PB (Pretty Boy) online as it has pretty awesome speed for an 80t mech. At this rate I may put my slower mechs on ice and field only those mechs capable of 64 kph or higher. It's actually NOT that fun to slog around in 48kph mechs.

The sweet spot for the mechs appears to be around 75/85t. Any less, and you don't have room to max out armor AND load sufficient weapons AND reloads to matter. Any more, and you end up either slow as molasses (like regular Atlas) or underarmed or underarmored (most forms of Banshee), Charger 3K, at 80t, seems to be actually pretty decent and actually moves at 81kph, same speed as its SEVERELY underarmed 1A1 cousin.

There's a bit of debate whether regular AC or AC-BF is better. Those who like BF like the raw damage, but others point out BF spreads the damage out a bit like shotgun and thus while it delivers raw damage numbers it doesn't score cripples or kills as fast as regular AC.

I found myself usually organizing 2 lances: the "fast" lance is Archer Agincourt, Atlas Boar's Head, Cyclop's Slepnir, and Battlemaster 1GHE, all 64kph. This one clocks in at 345t The slow lance is King Crab Carapace, King Crab Kaiju, Highlander Heavy Metal, and the other Atlas Hero (forgot designation, maybe KR?) at 48kph, clocks in at 390t. I can sub in other mechs on the roster such as the Corsair for the slow lance, and the Black Knight P for the fast lance. I think I also have the Mauler Knockout for the slow lance. I really should activate more lighter mechs (maybe 85 tonners) so I can field faster lances, even if they are lighter.

Agincourt is SRM-boat, all SRM4 or SRM2 launchers. I can throw enough SRMs to do headshots with a bit of careful aiming.

Atlas Boar's Head is pretty much default config with Tier 4 or Tier 5 upgrades, mostly M Lasers. I think I gave it a heavy rifle and L Laser to keep the heat and weight down and max armored it.

Cyclops Slepneir has the default dual gauss config, albeit upgraded to T4/T5. Same with Battlemaster 1GHE.

King Crab Carapace has 4x LBX10-slugs with 2 SRM2 launchers. It destroys smaller mechs in 2-4 salvos.

King Crab Kaiju has 2 PPC and 2 L Chem Lasers, to cut down on the heat spikes, IIRC. The rest is stock.

Highlander Heavy Metal is default config, and is almost identical to my 732B.

Atlas KR is mostly stock.

Corsair is currently sporting AC/20 and LBX10 slug and 2 L Chem Lasers.

Black Knight P has 3 ER L Lasers and a bunch of small lasers, basically same as a Marauder II, but much lighter.

Mauler KO has 2 LBX10 slug and 2 LRM-15s.

If I have to do a multi-mission contract as long as the mechs are not too damaged from the first mission it will be ready for the third mission if you repair them immediately.

[gbasden]

Started new career from scratch, with the following mods:

* (Almost Clear) Night Vision -- make the night-vis actually clear enough to see in
* Mod Options -- displays a mod option to the options menu for tuning some mod options
* Pilot Overhaul -- adds positive and negative traits to pilots, which can improve or debuff their stats and/or potentials, as well as fatigue and more injuries. Pilots now need 2-4 days rest after each mission so you need a whole stable of pilots if you want to take on multi-battle missions, or you can send them out with reduced skills (representing fatigue)
* TTRulez_AIMOd2 -- improves both friendly and enemy AI
* SMMO Logos -- improves starmap system rollovers to show which faction have what missions against whom, so you can decide on where to go.
* Rothe Formation -- instead of you leading the diamond, you're now in the back.
* Remove jump ship animation -- eponymous
* QoL upgrades -- some convenience like "repair all"
* MechAttribute Viewer -- rollover to see what's in the mech
* Large_Markets Expanded -- makes market offer more stuff
* Enhanced Cooldown Pips -- cooldown pips now also show range for that weapon group
* Compass Headings -- shows it in degrees
* Battle FX Enhanced -- general improvement of looks, like debris, smoke, etc.
* Advanced Zoom -- up to 8x
* Xenopax Optimize -- improves framerate among other things
* Throttle Gauge with Line Markers -- adds 25/50/75 percent marker
* Higher Visibility Torso Twist -- makes torso twist yellow and more visible
* (Colored) Heat Gauge -- added color to the bar graph

These worked well so far and I'm up to Rep level 5 (and a lot of kills), only losing one mech (got cored) and it's a Spyder. Did lose the super weapon ultraAC/5 though. Darn it. Started with Enforcer / Spyder / 2 Locust. Now have Wolverine, Enforcer, Vulcan, Jenner, Assassin. Hope to salvage heavier mechs soon, need to find a way to cool down Wolverine as it's overheating too often. May shrink L Laser to Medium, or trade jumpjets for more heatsinks.

I had more mods loaded, but one of them broke the game (I can't add any points at the contract negotiation screen) and had to disable stuff to get things working again.

Wow, the mod scene on Epic sucks. The only mod of these that exists there is TTRulez_AIMOd2. At least that's the one I wanted most.

[gbasden]

One other question - is there some trick to getting the LRMs to lock on? I've held the cursor over units for many seconds without getting it and other times it seems to appear out of the blue.

Thanks!

[Kasey Chang]

Wow, the mod scene on Epic sucks. The only mod of these that exists there is TTRulez_AIMOd2. At least that's the one I wanted most.

You can download the mods from ANY source, esp. NexusMods. Just unzip the file, and copy the directory into the Mods directory in the MW5Mercs subdir. I have mixed mods from NexusMods and Steam workshop subscription.

[Kasey Chang]

One other question - is there some trick to getting the LRMs to lock on? I've held the cursor over units for many seconds without getting it and other times it seems to appear out of the blue.

You need to cycle through targets first. It won't lock on to anything that's in front of you. You need to designate a target with R or T. You can even target friendly with Q, assuming default key mapping.

Once, targeted, point the center crosshair at the target box, the reticule should start "rolling", and when it's locked on you'll hear a tone and the reticule turns red. Then you fire.

[Kasey Chang]

Lance update: put all of the 48 kph mechs on ice, and brought out all 64 kph mechs.

Lance is now: Charger 3K, Zeus 9S, Awesome Pretty Boy, Awesome 9M, Kintaro Golden Boy (5 SRM launchers!), Archer Agincourt (a dozen SRM launchers), Battlemaster Hellslinger (GHE), Cyclops Slepnier (dual Gauss), Warhammer Blackwidow (lots of flamers), Cyclops 11P (single gauss), Blackjack Arrow (tons of MGs), Atlas Boar's Head (the only Atlas that goes 64kph).

Turns out Charger 3K is a mistake. It's too weak to do anything except popping turrets, tanks, and so on. I need to give it more brawling punch by giving it SRMs, then I need to give it larger lasers to fill out the weight. I'll probably end up replacing Charger with a Victor. Same weight, jumpjets, should be okay with a good pilot, esp. the two hero mechs, either Basilisk with ECM or the other hero mech.

Blackjack Arrow is armed with no less than 6 machine guns. I'm going to take it for a spin on a demolition mission or ankle-biting brawl. Will probably replace with something a bit beefier though.

[gbasden]

One other question - is there some trick to getting the LRMs to lock on? I've held the cursor over units for many seconds without getting it and other times it seems to appear out of the blue.

You need to cycle through targets first. It won't lock on to anything that's in front of you. You need to designate a target with R or T. You can even target friendly with Q, assuming default key mapping.

Once, targeted, point the center crosshair at the target box, the reticule should start "rolling", and when it's locked on you'll hear a tone and the reticule turns red. Then you fire.

Thanks! I totally missed that.

[Kasey Chang]

Active Hangar currently contains:

* Hatamoto-27W (2 L Laser +1 LBX/10 slug)
* Awesome PB - Pretty boy -- 2x ER PPCs + LRM + SRM
* Awesome 9M -- 3x ER L Lasers + other stuff
* Warhammer Blackwidow 2 x ER PPC + 4 MGs + 2 M Laser + SRM6
* Victor DS Dragon Slayer (LBX10 + PPC)
* Archer Agincourt (loads of SRMs)
* Battlemaster Hellbringer (GHE) 2 x ER L Laser + Streak SRM and 4x M Laser
* Zeus 9S -- dual ER PPCs
* Cyclops Sleipnir -- dual gauss
* Cyclops 11P -- 2x UAC5 + 4 M Laser
* Atlas Boar's Head -- heavy rifle, 6 x M Laser + SRM6
* Banshee 3S (just bought in Mech Market), being outfitted with LBX/10 slug, 2 ER PPCs, and 4 M Lasers

If I need to put a mech away it'd probably be the Blackwidow being the lightest (tied with Agincourt, but Agincourt is severely overpowered due to SRM swarm) though it's also possible Hatamoto W gets the vote. It totally duels and handles itself fine for human player, as it only needs three weapon groups, same as a human who plays efficiently. Though in heavy engagements the LBX/10 can run out of ammo. But the combination gets headshots. Lots of headshots.

[Kasey Chang]

Just surpassed the 1 billion asset mark, and I've gotten 91% of mech database filled (and purchased / salvaged dozens and dozens of mechs, practically 1 of every variant) and most (over 90%) of all hero mechs. I'm doing dif 100 missions going 100t underweight and still have no problems as my pilots are THAT good. So I think I'm pretty much done with MW5 at this time, unless I want to start with a new set of mods.

[Blackhawk]

So, which mod did you end up using to tweak potential pilot skill?

[Kasey Chang]

So, which mod did you end up using to tweak potential pilot skill?

Pilot Overhaul.

Pilots now can get positive quirks when gaining skills, and negative quirks when injured. Positive quirks expands skill capability, while negative quirks will cause decrease in skill capability. Training can cause gaining positive quirks, and rehabilitate negative quirks. If you got the time and money, send a pilot off to a self-discovery mission which may enable the pilot gain a bit more than their "natural potential".

Pilots now can randomly be "bruised" which disables him/her for about 20+ days. Pilots are also "fatigued" after a mission for up to 4 days. Sending them out may result in injuries. Overall, injury rate seems higher, and death may come more often. So you will need more pilots.

All pilots now can be customized with a lot more portraits, and you can rename them, as well as edit their bio, and even change their voices from the internal selection (male 1, female 3, you get the idea).

Best part? You can play as ANY of your pilots, not only as yourself. Which also means that your avatar can be killed. Your avatar also cannot gain any quirks (positive or negative).

And your pilots can get skills up to the 80's, instead of max of 60 (6 skills of 10 each). I think I have one that's up to 82/84.

EDIT: I have one up to 86/87 now.

[Kasey Chang]

Final, final hangar composition:

* Cyclops Sleipnir (S) - 2 x Gauss, 3 M Laser,
* Awesome 9M - 3x ER L Laser, 2 Streak SRM2, 1 MLaser, 1 Flamer
* Stalker 3H - going on ice, but currently 2x LRM15, 2xSRM6, 4x M Laser, only 48kph
* Zeus 9S -- 2x ER PPC, 2 M P Laser, 1 SRM6
* Victor Dragon Slayer (DS) -- ER PPC, LBX10, 2 M Laser, 1 SRM6, jumpets
* Archer Agincourt (AGC)-- 4 M P Laser, 4x SRM4 + 2x SRM2 launchers
* Banshee 3S -- 2 ER PPC, 5 M Laser, LBX10, SRM6, going on ice as it's 48kph
* Cyclops 11P -- 2 UAC/5, 4 M Laser, 1 SRM2
* Battlemaster Hellbringer (GHE) -- 3 x Streak SRM, 2 ER L Laser, 4 M Laser
* Zeus Skokomish (SK) -- Masc, 2 LRM10, 2 SRM6, 1 ER L Laser, 1 AC/5, 1 M Laser (normal speed of 64, MASC speed of 80+)
(changing to 1 LRM10+ART, 2 SRM6+SRM2, 1 ER L Laser, 1 LBX10, 1 M Laser, keeping MASC
* Zeus Skokomish (SK) -- MASC, 1 ER L Laser, 4 SRM6, 1 Heavy Rifle, 1 M Laser
* Awesome Pretty Boy (PB)-- 2 ER PPC, 1 LRM15, 1 SRM4, 1 M Laser
* Atlas Boar's Head (BH)-- Heavy Rifle, 6 M Laser, SRM6
* Banshee La Melinche (LM) -- 2 ER L Laser, 1 LBX10, 1 LRM15, 1 M Laser

I tried Banshee Hero LM (La Melinche) but last time it went out it got cored. I'm putting Stalker 3H and Banshee 3S on ice, and bringing La Melinche out again.

EDIT: Someone is advocating turning Zeus SK (with MASC) into an 4xSRM6 boat with max cooling, keeping just 1 L Laser and 1 M Laser for popping turrets or VTOLs. WIth MASC it can open and close range at any time, with speed of 96 kph for short bursts. One full salvo of SRM24 into torso/cockpit of assault mech is enough to kill the pilot and/or core a mech. I may have to try it. The result is... see above. Left a heavy rifle in there with 2 tons of ammo. Not a lot, but judicious use will wreck mechs not expecting it.

All of these mechs are combat tested by both AI and myself. They all go 64kph (or faster) and thus can easily avoid all artillery.

[Kasey Chang]

Been uploading a TON of videos of MW5 and I probably have a couple dozen uploaded by now, and maybe a few more to go.

I don't know about starting again. I MAY get the mod that lets the reputation go to 30, and slower leveling. Basically, I'm going to test a couple combination of mods, and see what works for me, without going full YAML. But I am probably about done with MW5.

[Blackhawk]

Man, I just ran a beachhead, and that was an effing brutal mission. I didn't even get all eight artillery and four double radar locations taken care of before half of my lance was dead, and they were all dead (including me) before we got the central point taken care of. The entire screen was constantly full of enemies, dropship after dropship. There was no time to catch my breath, and losing after 45 minutes wasn't fun.

[Blackhawk]

Wiped again.

I despise the artillery in these missions. It's obnoxious, and it takes forever to kill, and is an ammo sink.

Honestly, I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I get zero reputation/XP from the missions I can do, and the ones that give me usable rewards I can barely complete. It takes every dollar I earn just to pay for repairs, and that's if I don't wipe two or three times in the process. I have the AI mods, I use the AI build guides, and I babysit them, but they are effing stupid. I've watched the guides, the strategies, the playthroughs, but the game is just relentless, endless waves of mechs, tanks that snipe with pinpoint accuracy from halfway across the map, waves of aircraft. I'm running a Hunchback, two Centurions, and a Dervish. The Hunchback is useless on a mission, and is always the first to go down. But I have yet to see anything better.

And it doesn't help that I have to swap places with the AI repeatedly to get them unstuck from the terrain while being bombarded with waves of artillery and aircraft. Twice now I've had to leave a lancemate behind and try a mission a man short because they managed to get themself wedged in somewhere that that was impossible to move from.

[Kasey Chang]

Take missions in zones that are 2 BELOW your current rep level.

You want to record your play through and maybe I can recommend some places you could have done differently?

Show your different mechs and their loadouts.

Or we can play co-op if we ever get back on at the same time.

[Blackhawk]

Those missions were in a level 7 zone. I'm 9.

Honestly, MW5 suffers a lot from the same thing I've begun to see in a lot of games lately. Complex systems with zero guidance. In the old days, this game would have had a manual detailing what all of the stats meant, how the faction system worked (am I supposed to pick one? Keep them all balanced? Why? Are there rewards/benefits? What do the ratings mean? Can I piss them off enough they won't do business?), what the various difficulties/levels/ratings mean - which is confusing as hell - you have pilot ratings, your own reputation (why am I getting zero advancement now?), mission difficulty levels, zone reputation levels (I spent millions flying in circles, trying to find zones that were appropriate - I turn one way and they're 14+, I turn the other an they're 5-6.) There are all these different numbered ranking systems, but zero indication of how those numbers relate to each other. The best guess I've seen was that mission difficulty should be no higher than your pilots' average skills multiplied by ten. But nobody's sure. I'm rank 9. I'm in a rank 7 zone. Doing a difficulty 34 mission. With X mechs. There's nothing there to judge whether I'm in over my head or undershooting until I go in and get slaughtered repeatedly and waste two hours of my evening.

Yeah, there's a half-assed in-game information panel, but the game explains nothing. I'm not talking about difficulty here, I'm talking about the player having to act blindly because there is no indication of what anything actually means. Nothing is explained.

For example: I have an upgrade that makes lasers have a -7.5% duration. Duration? What the hell does that even do? Let me fire faster? Do the damage in less time? Do less damage? I have no idea, and there are about 50 other examples just like that.

20 years ago there would have been a 150 page manual with this game. 10 years ago there would have been extensive documentation on the disk/available for download/on the site. Now? Nothing. Guess, or search and hope somebody else figured it out. It's effing lazy.

But no, I loved the hell out of MWs 2, 3, and 4. I even played Online for a while. But this one has been nothing but confusion and frustration. I've already uninstalled it.

[Kasey Chang]

Hmmm... Sorry to hear that. I agree that the game does kinda throw you in the deep end and let you figure things out by yourself. But I usually make sense of the system in a few cycles. If I can't make a sense of it, it's either for real grognards or it's completely f***ed up.

I agree that a lot of Cantina upgrades could make more sense. The 7.5% shorter duration thing basically means there's less "scatter" when it comes to the laser pulses. Lasers "sweep" in MW5, and you only do full damage if you manage to keep the entire pulse on the enemy during the pulse. Shorter pulse duration means there's less chance of your shot missing partially, or have it "splash" onto adjacent sectors (from center torso to left torso, for example)

Most of the zone thing can be seen on the starmap by clicking on the system and reading the infobox. GENERALLY speaking, the center of inner sphere has the hotter stuff, and colder as you go outward toward periphery. There are some exceptions, but generally that's the way it goes.

There *is* an in-game manual... Upper left corner on the starmap, looks like a document icon. I think they call it the codex, that explains a lot of this. I personally never read it.

[Blackhawk]

Most of the zone thing can be seen on the starmap by clicking on the system and reading the infobox. GENERALLY speaking, the center of inner sphere has the hotter stuff, and colder as you go outward toward periphery. There are some exceptions, but generally that's the way it goes.

Right, but you can only do that when you're in range to discover them, and that took a ton of wasted flying around before I discovered that the difficulty increases in a clockwise circle starting from the lower right. I went 'up' first, then toward the center, then back up, then down - I just blindly guessed wrong. And again, the problem is that they have an unintuitive system and I had to blindly guess how it should work rather than the game providing some hint or guidance. And there is a happy medium between hand-holding and zero guidance - for instance, putting the missions in locations that lead you into appropriate areas is a time-tested method for achieving this. If you're rank 7 and unlock the rank 9 mission, have them put it in the far side of the rank 9 area on the other side of the rank 8 area and give you a pointer. You can open-world your way there, working your way up in the ranks as you go. You're free to detour, but you know where the right place is to progress.

And color code the damned mission difficulties, or give the lance a 'qualification rating' based on available mechs, equipment, and stats, and have the mission difficulty correspond to that instead of being a number from 1-100 that doesn't actually correspond to anything else. I still remember having no idea how much more difficult a difficulty 11 mission was than a 9, because there was no context for the numbers - not even whether it was a 1-15 range or a 1-100 range.

There *is* an in-game manual... Upper left corner on the starmap, looks like a document icon. I think they call it the codex, that explains a lot of this. I personally never read it.

That's what I was referring to by...

Yeah, there's a half-assed in-game information panel, but the game explains nothing.

It really is half-assed.

[Kasey Chang]

I agree, which is why I just started on my next career start. I'm back to reputation 3, starting from scratch, but this time I am explaining all of my moves and why. May be a while before those videos get uploaded though.

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Reputation 6, Y3017. So I am at the "hump", according to some people, where things get difficult. Just managed to procure multiple "decent" workhorse mechs like Centurion and Hunchback, and retiring and sold other mechs like Vulcan, Cicada, and so on. Have also purchased Dervish and Kintaro, so can field two different 200t lance with no problems. Pilots all have caps in the 30's and skills in the 20's, but I have two that have cap in the 40's.

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Reputation 6.5, Y3018, things are getting a bit hard, as the firepower increase isn't quite enough to compensate for the increased amount of enemies at the Rep 6 Dif 20-30 level. When one mech takes a critical hit, it's not possible to send that mech out of harm's way as you don't know where's the Evac Zone.

Also, it's dangerous to have the biggest gun. I've noticed a pattern that if you have the biggest gun, like AC20, AI mechs prioritize you as a target. And giving it to AI doesn't help, unless the AI has excellent evade / shield skills. This has happened in 2 missions in a row. I have a Centurion AH, which has a AC/20 in one arm. In two missions, it was heavily targeted. It got cored in one mission killing the pilot (he was a potential 42 pilot too) and in the 2nd mission, sent it back out, the guy lost the weapon, kept fighting, then his status went down to 1/4, then 1/8th (how is he still alive?) while the other two AI are trying to distract the few light mechs harrasing us all the way to Ryana. I was about 100m from the evac circle when the game crashed with a "fatal error". :ground:

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Went through Rep 7, 8, and now 9, Y3022? This is the cusp of breaking out the big assault mechs, and you don't ever seem to get the BIG salvage you need to grab an assault mech unless you get super-lucky and get a 50% or 75% bonus contract. I'm doing all the contracts in Kurita space right now, so when I go play for the FedCom I'll start with a pretty clean slate. I got 2 Awesomes (1T, 1Q), 1 Orion V, and a couple 55t and 50t mechs. All of my pilots have skills in the 30s, so when they concentrate fire they can actually kill mechs pretty easily.

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Rep 9, 3023, added some 70t mechs (Grasshopper, Warhammer) to existing staple (Orion, 2 Awesomes, and a bunch of 50t and 55t mechs), and finished most of the quests in Kuritan space. My rep with Davion side is still +5, so I'm in excellent place to start Kestrel missions when the time comes. I'm heading south toward Davion Kuritan border to do "Frontline Support", hopefully find some assault mechs so I can get rid of the medium mechs, however nice they were. Hiring and firing pilots, esp. those who are nearing their limits (have already 5 quirks and still with capabilities in 40's.

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Rep 10, 3024. Managed to finish Bow and Arrow with Orion, Stalker, and 2 Awesomes. The final mission, where Bowen finally showed up was both frustrating as heck... and anticlimactic. I think I ended up doing that mission 6 times. First time I got cored. Second time I hit a bug and next stage never triggered. Third, fourth, and fifth got killed no matter if I was driving the Stalker or the Orion. Sixth time, took the Orion, sent my buddies out first, attacked the Waco Rangers base first (rather than play defense, if I went to the city first), and managed to preserve myself pretty decently and wiped out most of the Rangers. Though one of the Awesome was in a bad shape. We need to then assault the city, killed a few mechs. I brought the 8Q, with 3xPPCs, and that just shreds enemies left and right. And I think I finally got the knack of headshots back, as I took out the enemies near me without TOO much damage, but my torso is showing yellow front and back. FINALLY, found the mech, and that's when Bowen dropped in with his lance. He's fresh, I am a bit beat but outweigh him by quite a bit. Turns out AI is pretty bad in city-fighting, and I caught two of the enemy mechs with its back to me and my Orion SRM/Laser alpha strike took out both. I then sniped at Bowen in his Marauder, and he went down. The final enemy went down not long after that.

I may be Rep 10, but I feel like Rep 8. Just SOME of my pilots are good enough to reach 50's. I did get enough mechs to matter (all 12 bays full of heavy mechs or assault mechs), and I *may* be ready for Hazing of the Weak or Bring Her Home, but I'll see if I can squeeze in some easier missions before being called away for Kestrel Lancers's Operation Galahad wargames, which is coming up in 3025.

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It's nearing the end of 3025, and I'm doing some missions in Marik space and Canopian space.

Managed to destroy one of the super-precious double heatsinks in my Agincourt doing a VERY long and tough mission. ARGH! Need to refit the Agincourt again, as I actually ran out of single heatsinks earlier.

Just did a Rep 2 Quest Chasing Ghosts, and only sent 2 mechs: 75t Orion and 85t Stalker. The Orion has a heavy rifle and the low firing rate actually forces me to dodge more. The damage is very respectable. We were blowing past all the light and medium mechs we faced and are barely scratched.

I don't think I'm ready for Hazing of the Weak and Bring Her Home, or even the "Eye on Democracy" Quest. Those are Rep 9 and 10 (and 8 I think). I would have expected the Kestrel lancer quest to have started by now? Or is that 3028? Hmmm...

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3026, almost rep 11, still going for missions in Marik and Liao territories, all that's NOT Rep 8 or 9 or 10. Most of the pilots are trained to 40's out of 50's. Just did the missions that got me Shenzhen. But I'm far from Terra and the industrial hubs near me don't have heavy mechs. And I don't have any double heatsinks I can put on. However, I did build up a little reserve fun of about 20M c-bills so I'm looking for my first 100t mech.

Right now, the stable consists of 2 Orions, 2 Dragons (1 hero), 1 Marauder, 1 Warhammer, 1 Grasshopper, 1 Stalker, 2 Awesome, and Archer Agincourt. I generally drive the Orions or the Agincourt. I really do need more assault mechs though.

Half of my pilots are undergoing "self-discovery" training trying to give them extra positive traits. Fortunately, that's enough left to do multiple missions if I were only sending out 3 at a time. But some may be getting the pink slip soon.

EDIT: Seems the call to action from Davion for GALAHAD will come VERY soon.

As a side note, I saved the game for the night, and three minutes later, the house circuitbreaker popped turning off the PC.

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3027, rep 11, just finished Operation GALAHAD and cleaning up the various quests near the Liao / Davion border such as Errant Signal, Cerberus Hounds, and Frontline Support -- Davion. Lance had not changed much, as I haven't gone coreward to look for heavier mechs. But I think I'm over the hump if I do my combat correctly and core or headshot enemies quickly. By the time Sortek calls again, I should have a few 100t mechs.

[Kasey Chang]

Rep 11, 3027, with Kestrel lancer campaign part 2 coming up very soon. Just finished The Conspirators, going to Hazing of the Weak, and if I can get to it, Bring Her Home. I need a few of those hero mechs. Just salvaged my first Victor (80t) which supplements my Stalker (85t) and 2 Awesomes (80t) and my recently acquired Cyclops 10Z (90t). I really need an Atlas though.

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Had to do the Conspirators final mission three times. Went in with Agincourt, Awesome Q (3x PPC), and 2 Dragons (1 hero sidewinder, 1 regular N) First, time, got cored when the enemy Archer and Trebuchet got me with repeated LRM salvos while I tried to rush them. The second time, I got them with a perfectly timed airstrike, killed one mech outright, then was able to kill the rest with some long-range fire. Then ran away from the second group. Unfortunately, as I approached the base to fight Vaughn, they caught up from behind and killed me (I believe they are supposed to switch sides, but didn't). The third time, I killed the first group, then went deep into the valley, where I stayed in the water and thus, gained cooling while they were tempted into using their jump jets (for those that have them) and thus we savaged them in close-quarters. Then we concentrated fire and nailed the Warhammer. THEN we went in to the base and nailed Vaughn's minions, then Vaughn himself, and finally the extra Cataphracts he brought along.

[Kasey Chang]

Rep 12, 3028. Just finished "Hazing the Weak" mission chain, and came out better than I expected. Was able to nab a Highlander 732b (90t), a Cyclops 11p (90t), AND the hero mech (Orion YAJ, 75t). This upgraded my lance significantly that I put on ice both Dragon 1N and the Dragon Sidewinder hero mech (both 60t) as well as the Grasshopper (70t). Previously put on ice the Warhammer (70t) for the Victor 9B (80t). I did have to use the purchase salvage mod twice though, once to get the Highlander, and once to get the Victor.

Just accepted the priority assignment, which signifies the start of the Kestrel Lancers campaign, 4 days before it expires. Agincourt is repaired with as many double heatsinks as I can find, and the repair orders for all the other mechs are in. They won't be done for the initial missions, but they're being prepared.

All in all I survived the "hump" of difficulty from Rep 6 to Rep 12 relatively painless.

[Kasey Chang]

Read the news of an interim stockholder report from MW5 maker's parent company, that MW5 maker PGI will be diverting its resources to support LOTR Online MMO as MW5 development had wound down. So there will be no more DLC for MW5, and there is no word on if there's a MW6 in the pipeline.

[Kasey Chang]

Playthrough video is up to Episode 16, which covers up to Reputation 10 (Y3026).

Survived Operation RAT (conquest of Tikonov, Tigress, and Sarna) in my playthrough, so there are a couple more episodes coming.

EDIT: Playthrough video now up to Episode 21, which is end of Tigress campaign, and off to Sarna we go.

EDIT: Now up to Episode 24, Sarna's done, doing "Enemy of My Enemy" quest

EDIT: Now up to Episode 32, and upload has almost caught up as I've started making shorter episodes covering one quest each.

[NickAragua]

Read the news of an interim stockholder report from MW5 maker's parent company, that MW5 maker PGI will be diverting its resources to support LOTR Online MMO as MW5 development had wound down. So there will be no more DLC for MW5, and there is no word on if there's a MW6 in the pipeline.

Heh, wonder what that must feel like. One day, you're working on an awesome game about giant robots beating the shit out of each other, stomping buildings and lasers flying everywhere.

Then, the next day, you're working on a shitty 20-year old MMO.

(to be fair, I did enjoy it when I played it... back when I was still living in my parents' house. Which was 15 years ago just having left grad school and gotten a brand new job.)

[Blackhawk]

Then, the next day, you're working on a shitty 20-year old MMO.

Excellent 15-year old MMO that was sold to someone else who made it not quite as excellent.

[Kasey Chang]

Episode 37 is now active, with 3 more episodes being uploaded. Not too many quests left to do. Reputation 14 or 15, no problem with difficult 100 missions. Have 2 Marauder IIs, 2 Atlases, and many other assault mechs.

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At this rate, there will be 46 episodes, plus any extras where I just play the random missions, or even a few multi-missions. I've played just about every quest on the map in career mode.

Episode 38 just went online, and the rest are being uploaded except the "extras" (yet to play and record those).

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Episode 43 is now online. At this rate, there will be 50 or 51 episodes. I completed all quests, and it's now just a matter of showing off the different mission types, finishing the Cantina missions, and discussing a few things I may not have covered previously.

[NickAragua]

I thought that this wouldn't work with my current "downgraded" video card. Turns out it does.

So I spent way too much time playing it last night and goddamn it still scratches like 90% of my video game itches. Giant robots? Check. Lasers? Check. Explosions? Check.

I've got both expansions going, the infantry mod, "coyote's mission pack", "hatchetman" and a few others I don't remember off hand but thought were a good idea at the time. The only one that doesn't really work out for me is the "expanded leopard" mod, it slows the action in the dropship down to a crawl.

Man, I missed this game.